African Society’s Willful Ignorance Of Mental Health and Illness

So I was at church two Sundays ago (and yesterday too, I’m a Jesus baby) and a leader amongst us came forward with a testimony. She started describing the ordeal of a girl who was suffering from a “demonic attack” and because of that had not left the house in two years (and all around heads are shaking and you’re hearing, “the devil is a liar” in various languages and I would like to think that everyone thought she was bedridden for the 2 years) and she said she had prayed for said girl after explaining to her that she was at fault for letting the devil convince her of his lies. Then all of a sudden she goes, she invited the girl to her office the next day and she came… Long story short, her description became clearer and although this fact was never mentioned, anyone who listened and knew would have been able to tell, the girl in question, was suffering from a clear case of clinical depression.

Firstly, how is it that you can describe all the signs of a more and more rampant illness and then just comfortably tag it as “a demonic attack”.

Secondly, the fact that she told the girl that it was her fault that she was in the situation she was in.

I was too appalled to actually listen to the whole thing to the end but I know one thing for certain, she will not be referred for any professional help. They really just want to pray the suicidal thoughts away.

Last night, I had one of the most insightful conversations in 2018 with a friend over text and you need to understand, yes life is almost always hard hitting. But as the years go by kids come out more sensitive than those before them, there’s a trend of increasing emotional sensitivity and instability from the Baby Boomers to Generation X to the Xennials to the Millennials. It’s worse with our lean-sipping pill-popping generation call us iGen or Baby Bloopers or whatever, and might probably be even worse with the generation that follows us. Nobody told you life was going to hurt this much and more importantly nobody prepared you on how to pull yourself up when you are at your lowest. But everybody knows one guy who seems a lot happier under the influence so he probably has the answer.
Same thing on Twitter, where an artist gave a snippet of his fight with depression and how his friends told him “depression is not real, you just need a fix, the drugs will make the pain disappear”

Alongside many flaws of the African society, the ease with which we just ignore mental issues as non-existent till the sufferer in question is either dead or raving from a deep seated psychosis. Even then we just abandon them as “lazy people who couldn’t make it and life and chose death as the way out” or “mad people”, and some other PhD holder will shake his or her head and say it’s the witches in some village far away. The African society instills this idea that sadness is weakness and no one alive should know your weaknesses. And so many people are carrying emotional loads that they don’t even know are there. This same society will blame you for falling under the weight of the load that you don’t even know you are carrying.

We need to do better, we are losing too many kids. I have a couple of suggestions on how to help yourself out of these things.

Let yourself feel: Pain, love, anger; you can’t control what you do not feel. One of the most important physical sensations is pain. Pain is an indication that something is wrong and needs to be attended to. So you know if you are hungry or sick or have been scraped, burnt, scalded or whatever. The brain makes you feel that pain so you can take care of a problem, not so you stop the pain (this is why you should not just take painkillers when you have malaria, fix the problem, not the pain). Same applies to emotional pain. Find the problem and fix that, not the pain.

Talk: I’m of the opinion that the best way to find out what is really hiding in your mind is to talk. And I mean really talk to someone; someone who you know won’t judge and when you feel the pain coming to the surface don’t push it down. Let it out.

Seek Professional Help and Advice: I can not overemphasize the importance of advice from a trained professional. These people help a whole lot. If you feel yourself going off the deep end, you might need more than a conversation.